Thursday 5 July 2012

Arcade Mania!

Or to give the book it's full title: Arcade Mania! The Turbo-Charged World of Japan's Game Centers.

Long-term readers may remember that at Christmas 2011 I took part in the Retro Gamer forum Secret Santa and received the book as a present (seen here). Well, due to time constraints it's only now that I've finally managed to finish it and what an enjoyable book it is.

Covering nine chapters over 190 pages the book is an interesting look at the Japanese gaming market covering such areas as retro gaming, fighting games, cabinets, shooting and rhythm games and also areas such as crane and card-based games and sticker-picture machines.

Covering the likes of Cave, Suda 51, Mahjong, arcade cabinets, sticker machines and much other stuff the book is a very interesting and at times surprising look at the past and present of Japanese gaming, especially for people like myself who haven't had a chance to look at this area. I won't delve too much into it incase people want to read it themselves but I will say that it's definitely worth a read.

6 comments:

  1. Sounds exactly like my kind of book since I have far more interest in the Japanese arcade scene/culture than the rotting remains of the British 'arcades'. Going to have to look for this book now so thanks for the recommendation.

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  2. No bother mate, you should be able to find it on Amazon and the like for around £7 I think.

    It's definitely worth a read as it covers past and present and it's intersting to see how different the Japanese scene is to ours.

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  3. Sounds interesting, and if its pretty cheap from Amazon i think i might pick this up, i think it will make for a nice quick read at 190 pages.

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  4. Welcome to the blog. :-)

    Another good thing is that within each chapter is half/one page articles so if you only have a few minutes spare you can just flick through them and read the main articles another time.

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  5. I have this book lying around somewhere, thanks to your recommendation, 'll have to see if I can dig it out. Sounds like good toilet library material!

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  6. Ha ha ha, thanks for the image.

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